I don’t have any strong feelings for or against Wikileaks at all, which feels very weird, because I definitely think I should. Seth Roberts endorsed a New Yorker commenter who argues that honest people support Wikileaks and dishonest people oppose it. This seems particularly disingenuous to me, and I’d add at least one more group to the for/against dichotomy: progressives who consider tactical and strategic leaking to be valuable weapons in their struggle to implement their agenda.
By tactical leaking, I mean leaked documents or information that directly harm a specific conservative politician, bureaucrat or policy. By strategic leaking, I mean contributing to a culture in which the crimes and evil deeds of conservatives always become known to the population, making conservatives seem more criminal and evil than progressives, whose crimes and evil deeds are less likely to become known.
That’s not to say that Wikileaks is so overtly and overwhelmingly progressive that none of its leaks will benefit conservatives. It’s not, and some of them will. Tactically, only a plurality – not a clear majority – of the latest leak cycle and of all the leaks I remember coming from Wikileaks were harmful to conservatives or helpful to progressives. But strategically, Wikileaks has struck a blow to conservatives and some of the policies they support, and is poised to unleash something on America’s financial sector comparable to what was unleashed on the State Department last week.
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I don’t have any strong feelings for or against Wikileaks at all, which feels very weird, because I definitely think I should.
Well, let’s compare it to something else. Do you have any strong feelings about software piracy and the RIAA/MPAA’s struggles against it?
Actually, one could claim that the Wikileaks controversy is really just about a nerd on a power trip, taking the software world’s open source mindset and forcing it onto the unsuspecting political and media world, whose denizens understand it little.
(TBH, I’m sure there are many articles on the Internet that talk about this aspect of the affair, but I haven’t had time to go digging for news lately)
If there is a problem with bias in WikiLeaks, then conservative nerds should launch their own leak site with a counterbias. I’m nominally a Democrat but I’d rather my party be kept honest, even if it means electoral losses.
I haven’t seen anything in these leaks that surprised me, though admittedly I haven’t followed the coverage too closely. The “Caucasus Wedding” cable was hilarious, well-written and rang true to anyone who knows anything about the Caucasus, but other than that I was bored by the whole thing. I think it’s unwise to condemn either spying or leaking in general, as abstract concepts, for the same reason that pacifism and unilateral disarmament are unwise. So my personal attitude to WikiLeaks very much depends on what exactly it is leaking. And so far it hasn’t leaked anything important one way or the other.
Well, let’s compare it to something else. Do you have any strong feelings about software piracy and the RIAA/MPAA’s struggles against it?
Not exactly. I download music, movies and television programs prolifically via Bit Torrent, but I would stop if I thought there was a good chance that I could be caught. It’s hard for me to tell whether I’m inclined to the Austrian School’s take on “intellectual property” because it makes my life easier or because it’s actually convincing.
Actually, one could claim that the Wikileaks controversy is really just about a nerd on a power trip, taking the software world’s open source mindset and forcing it onto the unsuspecting political and media world, whose denizens understand it little.
(TBH, I’m sure there are many articles on the Internet that talk about this aspect of the affair, but I haven’t had time to go digging for news lately)
I’m sure that’s true, but when have things in the news not been about a nerd on a power trip?
If there is a problem with bias in WikiLeaks, then conservative nerds should launch their own leak site with a counterbias.
Wikileaks doesn’t receive leaked documents randomly or in a vacuum: the other side of the organization is its strong relationships with the media that publish the documents (note that they typically release them to mainstream newspapers for publication). Those media need to be mainstream, or else the leaks would be treated like a crock and just ignored. And for any media to be mainstream, they must be progressive, since conservatives will follow progressive media, but progressives will not follow conservative media.
If I were a conservative, I wouldn’t bother trying to start a conservative version of Wikileaks until I figured out how to establish high quality and potentially mainstream conservative media to publish them. But conservative media can not become mainstream, nor are conservatives normally the type of people not to have a problem with leaking or with publishing something that’s been leaked.
I’m nominally a Democrat but I’d rather my party be kept honest, even if it means electoral losses.
How would you know if your party is being kept honest? What criteria do you use to measure honesty in a fundamentally dishonest institution?
I haven’t seen anything in these leaks that surprised me, though admittedly I haven’t followed the coverage too closely. The “Caucasus Wedding” cable was hilarious, well-written and rang true to anyone who knows anything about the Caucasus, but other than that I was bored by the whole thing.
You’d probably be singing a different tune if you were, for example, a Gulf Arab autocrat who’s now on record asking the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear program and saying that Israel doesn’t worry you all that much.
I think it’s unwise to condemn either spying or leaking in general, as abstract concepts, for the same reason that pacifism and unilateral disarmament are unwise. So my personal attitude to WikiLeaks very much depends on what exactly it is leaking. And so far it hasn’t leaked anything important one way or the other.
I totally agree, and obviously espionage and leaking are sometimes justified, sometimes necessary, etc. The question should be whether leaks are investigated vigorously and whether the rules against leaking documents still get enforced. If you’re a mid-level diplomat and you leak information that results in a lot of people’s lives being saved because it’s the right thing to do, would you be willing to lose your job or serve prison for it? If the people who leak to Wikileaks think they’re doing the right thing, are they willing to turn themselves in to the authorities?
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